Ventura County Superintendent of Schools César Morales handed his top deputies lifetime health benefits, a perk that’s become rare in the county’s government agencies due to its high potential cost to taxpayers.
The benefit was awarded without the knowledge of the Ventura County Board of Education, two board members told The Star. That means the benefit could violate a provision of the California Education Code that requires Board of Education approval for any increase in any employee’s retirement benefits.
The lifetime health benefits, which also extend to the employees’ spouses, are included in employment contracts entered into in March by five of the top executives in the Ventura County Office of Education.
Morales was elected by the county’s voters to run that office – he’s up for re-election now, in the June primary – and the elected Board of Education has budget oversight and other duties.
He faces two opponents in the June 2 primary election: Karen Sher, a teacher and a member of the Oxnard Union High School District board, and Maggie Marschner, the former principal of La Reina High School and Middle School in Thousand Oaks until the all-girls Catholic school closed in 2024.
Morales’ office released the contracts on May 22, a month after a local political blogger named Jess Weihe had asked for them under the California Public Records Act. Employment contracts with state and local government agencies are considered public records under California law. Weihe also requested other documents that have not been provided yet.
After two weeks had passed without a response from the Office of Education, Weihe repeated her request and copied members of the Board of Education. One of the board members, Richard Lucas III, said he was disturbed by the lack of transparency from Morales’ office, so on May 22, he showed up at the Office of Education headquarters and said he would wait until he was provided with the records Weihe had asked for.
Lucas III said he sat in a conference room for eight hours, taking an entire day off of his job as a mobile crane operator. At about 4:45 p.m., employees of the Office of Education handed both him and Weihe paper copies of the executives’ contracts.
“Essentially, I forced their hand,” Lucas III said. “I believe they were not going to comply, and that’s why I went. The office staff was polite, but I had to push.”
The Star has reviewed the documents given to Weihe and Lucas III, but the Office of Education has not responded to The Star’s request to receive them, too.
‘None of this was transparent and clear’
Lifetime health benefits are not a standard feature of employment with the Office of Education. Rachel Ulrich, the president of the Ventura County Board of Education, said the office stopped awarding them in the 1990s, due to concerns about the cost, though some retirees from that era still have them.
It’s incredibly difficult to estimate how much a person’s health care might cost as they age, Ulrich said, and it’s risky for a public agency to commit taxpayer funds to covering that entire cost.
“The reason this needs to go before the board in a public meeting is because it creates long-term financial liability, and these things have to be publicly disclosed,” she said. “None of this was transparent and clear. None of it came before our board in a transparent and clear manner, if at all.”
Don Brodt, the chairman of the Ventura County Taxpayers Association, said he’s not aware of any government agency in Ventura County that offers lifetime coverage to its employees, though some agencies in other areas, including the Los Angeles Unified School District, do offer the benefit.
Retirees from the County of Ventura and most other local public agencies rely primarily on Medicare, the federal program that provides coverage for every American 65 and older.
“Some government employers feel like they need to offer better benefits to attract top talent, but at the same time, if nobody else is offering this, do you really need to offer it?” Brodt said.
It’s unclear whether Morales himself has lifetime healthcare coverage. He has refused numerous interview requests from The Star in recent weeks.
In an email on May 20, The Star asked Dave Schermer, the chief spokesperson for the Office of Education, whether Morales and his top executives had lifetime health benefits. Schermer did not respond to the question.
The contract that the Office of Education released for Morales was signed in January 2021, when Morales was a deputy superintendent. It does not include lifetime health benefits, but it does state that Morales will receive “all applicable health, welfare and fringe benefits enjoyed by other employees” in the office.
The Office of Education has not released a contract for Morales’ current position. In response to an earlier public records request by The Star, the office said that as an elected official, Morales does not have an employment contract.
Morales had to pay back unauthorized bonus
This is the second time in a week that Morales has come under fire for paying a benefit that wasn’t authorized by the Board of Education. On May 15, Morales admitted that he paid himself a $15,570 unapproved bonus in 2024, in violation of a provision of the Education Code that requires board approval for any increase in the superintendent’s pay.
In an open letter posted to the Office of Education’s website, Morales said he had already returned the money. He paid back $7,619, Schermer told The Star, which was what was left of the bonus after payments for taxes and benefits were withheld.
Schermer said in an email that the Office of Education has already been made whole for the remaining $8,131, by adjusting its payments to the IRS and other agencies that withhold money from employees’ paychecks.
In a statement to The Star on May 20, Brodt said the Taxpayers Association is “deeply troubled by the story of Superintendent Morales, which centers on a blatant lack of accountability and process.”
The statement called on the Board of Education “to launch an independent investigation into any expenditures made without proper oversight or approval.”
Morales to face board on May 26
The board may do something like that. Its first meeting since the revelations about Morales’ pay and his deputies’ benefits is May 26.
The agenda for that meeting includes a number of items related to transparency and fiscal oversight, including a proposal for annual reviews of the superintendent’s salary and a discussion of how the Office of Education responds to public records requests.
“I’m committed to the process of unraveling and investigating and finding out the facts,” Ulrich said.
The meeting begins at 6 p.m. in the board room at the Office of Education headquarters, at 5100 Adolfo Road in Camarillo.
Tony Biasotti is an investigative and watchdog reporter for the Ventura County Star. Reach him at tbiasotti@vcstar.com. This story was made possible by a grant from the Ventura County Community Foundation’s Fund to Support Local Journalism.
This article originally appeared on Ventura County Star: Health benefits boosted for top county school officials, records show
Reporting by Tony Biasotti, Ventura County Star / Ventura County Star
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